Once Again, Gazans Are Displaced by Israeli Occupiers

By STEVEN ERLANGER

Published: July 12, 2006

Khairi Edbary and his family of eight normally share a tiny concrete house with his brother and his family of eight, with a raw dividing wall of concrete blocks providing a touch of privacy.

These days, however, the house is almost empty. The Edbarys live on the eastern edge of the broken runway of what was once the Gaza airport, which has now been taken over by Israeli troops.

Like many of the people here, mostly poor farmers, the Edbarys have heeded the Israeli call to evacuate their homes to escape the fighting and are sleeping in United Nations schools in nearby Rafah.

Mr. Edbary, 36, displayed a large brass shell from an Israeli heavy machine gun that had fallen from an attack helicopter onto his roof. ''At night,'' he said, ''the noise is frightening, and the firing shakes the ground. They shoot at anything moving at night.''

He had returned to his house on Tuesday to prepare some food for his family and retrieve documents for a sick daughter, before making his way back about three miles to the Rafah Elementary Boys School, run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which helps Palestinian refugees and their families.

In the last week, the agency has opened two schools in Rafah to house the displaced people of Shuka and southern Gaza. There are about 1,000 people in 136 families at the two schools, sleeping on thin mattresses in empty classrooms, said Jamal Hamad, an agency spokesman, ''but the numbers are increasing every day.''

Initially, people like Fayez Sawarka, 40, stayed at home. But the Israeli incursion into the airport and its neighborhood, with tanks and armored bulldozers and artillery, destroyed some of the narrow roads and made it difficult if not impossible for farmers to get to their fields or to bring in food.

The shelling and the noise were followed by Israeli calls on loudspeakers for residents to leave their homes for their own safety.

''We just took our identity cards and the clothes we were wearing,'' Mr. Sawarka said, adding that he, his wife and their 10 children lived for a week in the open outside Rafah. Locals fed them, and the United Nations agency finally brought them a tent, then began to open the schools.

''We left all the crops in the ground,'' he said, watermelon, garlic, cucumbers and tomatoes. ''I know nothing about my house.''

The agency provides food, water and shelter, plus some social workers. But no one knows how long this will last.

For John Ging, the director of operations for the agency in Gaza, the Israeli incursion, to try to force the release of a captured soldier, is the latest strain on a population already suffering from a broad economic boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, which has been unable to pay salaries for five months.

''There is now a humanitarian crisis here,'' Mr. Ging said. ''For many Palestinians now, it's a struggle to survive, for the basics of life.''

Before the Israeli incursion, the agency and other aid institutions were struggling to help people cope with the lack of jobs and salaries.

Now, he said, with the destruction of Gaza's only power plant, the bombing of some key bridges, the damage to water pipes and the sleep deprivation caused by sonic booms, ''there is collective suffering here that doesn't distinguish'' between civilian and fighter.

''We are all collectively living with the consequences of that Israeli military action,'' he said. ''It affects everyone.''

Mr. Ging said that Israeli citizens under Palestinian rocket fire were also living in fear, and that that was equally unacceptable. ''All lives are equal,'' he said.

Still, his job is Gaza, and with the closure of the Karni border crossing because of security alerts, ''we'll run out of broad beans and whole milk in another day.''

The agency now distributes food packages to 725,000 of Gaza's 1.4 million people, an increase of 100,000 in the last month, he said. There are 235 shipping containers of food in Israel, he said, at the Ashdod port, waiting to be brought through the Karni crossing.

According to the World Food Program, ''the last two weeks have had a significant impact on food security,'' with shortages of milk and sugar, and only a week's supply of flour remaining, said a spokeswoman, Kirstie Campbell. Food companies and bakeries are struggling with the power cuts, she said, and fishermen are not allowed out beyond the harbor, though on Monday Israel allowed the program to bring in some canned meat and flour through the Erez crossing, normally used only for people.

''The issue is capacity,'' she said. The one truck through Erez took an hour and contained 25 metric tons of food, she said. But 1,000 metric tons of flour is waiting in Ashdod, though that represents only a third of the agency's monthly needs for its 160,000 recipients.

Israel has said that it is trying to minimize harm to civilians as it tries to force the release of the soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, and stop rocket fire into Israeli towns. More than 50 Palestinians have died since the Israeli incursion began nearly two weeks ago; most of the dead have been militants.

Israel has also said it has allowed in needed gasoline and diesel fuel, medicine and foodstuffs, and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert noted Monday that Israel was still supplying Gaza with water and electricity because ''we don't want to punish the civilian population.''

Still, after the damage to the power plant, most Gazans get only six hours of electricity a day, at unpredictable times, so refrigeration of food becomes a problem. So does water supply, because many Gazans use electric pumps to get their water, and there are similar problems with sewage treatment.

On Saturday, the head of Israel's Gaza liaison administration, Col. Nir Press, told The Jerusalem Post that ''the situation in Gaza is not even close to developing into a humanitarian crisis,'' saying such charges made by the Palestinians were aimed at deceiving the international community.

Mr. Ging, the United Nations representative, said in response: ''There's growing resentment expressed to me about the debate whether it's a humanitarian crisis or not. It is a humanitarian crisis.''

The Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya, emerged on Tuesday from a long period of silence to hold a cabinet meeting. He told reporters that living conditions in the Gaza Strip ''are becoming critical because of a lack of food, fuel and medicine.''

Mr. Haniya thanked the European Union for sending fuel for Gaza hospitals via a new mechanism set up to meet the basic needs of Palestinians without going through the Hamas-led government. Around 78,000 gallons of fuel was delivered Tuesday to power generators at public hospitals, the first of what are meant to be monthly deliveries.

In Shuka, Mr. Edbary said he supported the raid into Israel that captured the soldier, and thought Israel should be willing to negotiate some form of prisoner exchange.

''At least Israel should release the women and children prisoners of ours that they have,'' he said. ''It's shameful.''

Does he think his government bears some responsibility for the troubles he now has? Mr. Edbary's eyes wandered. ''I don't care about politics,'' he said. ''I care about our dignity.''

Photos: The United Nations has opened two schools near Rafah, in southern Gaza, to house Palestinian refugees shunted aside in the Israeli incursions.; Khairi Edbary, 36, and his wife moving their family of eight on Tuesday from their home in Shuka, Gaza, to a center set up in a local school. (Photographs by Shawn Baldwin for The New York Times)